I came up with the tagline for Hell Wards. It comes from an email I was writing to someone about the system and it just kind of fell out… “Because sometimes the numbers just get in the way…” —————- Narrative Control
Category Archive: Game Design
Feb 19
Hell Wards Character Sheet
Quick doodle for a character sheet for playtesting rev 1 of the system. Nothing really original but then the setting isn’t what you’d call original either. Trying to evoke the ’50′s of the setting with the typewriter font and the real paper documents that may have had a bit of weathering and such. I don’t …
Feb 15
Game Design – Hell Wards
The opening page of Hell Wards (I seriously wish G+ honored indents in a consistent fashion). It’s a system I wrote the bulk of in a weekend. Major gratitude to +kirin robinson for Old School Hack and +Fred Hicks for Don’t Rest Your Head for getting me moving in this direction. What Hell Wards Is …
Feb 10
Hell Wards – Opening Fiction
For whatever reason, no I’m not sure why myself, I’ve set the setting of “H” Wards in the 50′s. 1954 to be exact. Maybe because it was the year that Godzilla hit the big screen for the first time? Or the year millions of men swore and cursed as Joe DiMaggio took Marilyn Monroe off …
Feb 08
H Wards – Play Example
This is a play example I just put into the H Wards document, a narrative heavy, light mechanics system. I think the system is actually shaping up that it’s going to be quite a bit of fun. It’s not designed for long term campaigns or for groups that like a lot of fiddly bits and …
Feb 07
Game Design
H Wards Mechanics – In a clever play on stat initials the light system I came up with between 1 and 4 in the morning Monday because I wasn’t feeling well is called H Wards. The name is based solely on the resources available to each player, Hero, War, Awesomeness, Research, Deception, Social. I had …
Feb 03
Thoughts on Playtesting and SImulation
Playtesting and Simulation – It’s important IMPO as you’re designing your ‘engine’ that you play test it at frequent steps along the way and do it thoroughly. This means create characters brand new for each one, using the steps as you’ve written them out. Don’t just assume you know what you mean. Read each step …
Feb 01
Action Economy and Limits
Just to offer a few minutes in the mind of someone who’s creating a game system this is what I just emailed to my play group, mainly to clarify the thoughts to myself more than anything. I do that a lot, putting it down as a stream of thought onto ‘paper’ to get a clearer …
Jan 25
LCA! – Directing Tips
How to host a murder This is the rough first draft of the chapter of tips and suggestions for would be directors, aka game masters. I have the feeling it may come off as preachy, definitely opinionated and with a bit of ‘this is the right way to do it’ but I’m not sure that’s …
Jan 24
LCA! – Encumbrance
Cash And Carry The carry mechanic also known as the how much phat l3wt can I carry out of the dungeon… I’ll be honest since roughly 1980, I’ve abstracted weight and limits and capacities for my players to a ‘whatever seems reasonable’ limit. I remember once I had a new player join my DnD session …
Jan 17
Random Skill Gains First Draft
Based on comments from my group and other who I broached the question to, I’ve added a ‘semi-random’ skill up mechanic to LCA!. The idea is to cater to the folks who enjoy a little bit of randomness in their character’s path choices as well as the ones who have a definite, “This is what …
Jan 17
Game Design / Work Flow
Using a Change Log About version .7 or so of LCA! with the bulk of the rough mechanics was done I started a change log document. The changes were getting small enough that it was feasible to note them and as I was starting to forget that I’d changed things due to information glut it …
Jan 16
Random Skill Gains
Random skillups Curious if anyone has an opinion on the pros/cons of a random skill up system. Most systems I’m familiar with, skill gains are done either automatically as you level up or you get character points when you level that you can then spend to level up your skills as you see fit. There …
Jan 11
Game Design / Mechanics
Sigh, nothing is more painfully annoying than making a drastic change to a mechanic as far spreading as damage health healing and having to go back and edit the changes everywhere it’s mentioned, every example, every sample character etc. But as a result I as I was scrolling along I did some clean up in …
Jan 08
Charisma – What is it good for?
Charisma as a stat…. Do we really need it? Climbing in the WABAC machine with Mister Peabody and Sherman and checking things out, charisma has been a mostly ignored stat from day one and yet always there. Its kind of like laws for lawmakers. It gets lip service but never really used. Sure back in …
Jan 07
The Active Defense
The active defense – To continue my previous post, I think it was my previous post, I’m going to stream of thought, putting things into letters helps solidify them for me. Trivia note: LCA! has a strong tactical leaning. I’m trying to find a happy (for me) middle ground somewhere between Savage Worlds and DnD …
Jan 06
Active Vs Passive Defenses
The active defense versus the passive defense. A recent look at the 6d6 core system has me thinking about the differences between active defense and passive defenses in RPG mechanics. The passive defense is the most common in my experience. The attacker (or whatever) typically rolls dice or otherwise generates a random result. This is …
Jan 02
Sample Scenes Plzkthx
Just wanted to point that including sequences of ‘actual play’ (and note the s on the word sequence) goes a long way toward making your system understandable. Your potential audience hasn’t spent the last year working on your system and know it like the back of their hands. What’s blatantly obvious to you is rife …
Dec 27
Game Design/Mechanics
The 'tension' factor of the various re-roll mechanics out there has been something that I've been considering off and on ever since reading an article by someone, the details of which escape me. To sum it up, if a player has the ability to re-roll then any given roll loses it's immediacy/tension/pucker factor, whatever you …
Dec 19
The Red Queen
The Red Queen Mechanic – In the upcoming zompoc play test I’m going to be running it’s possible that some of the heroes may be immune to the Z virus. I’m going with ‘rage’ zombies, at least at first… Anyway, I’m going to pull out 8 misc cards and then add the two red queens …
22 hours ago Game Design I came up with the tagline for Hell Wards. It comes from an email I was writing to so...
February 21, 2012
February 21, 2012
2 days ago RPG Review Dread the Books of Pandemonium Free - http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/index.php?manufact...
February 20, 2012
February 20, 2012
3 days ago Game Design Quick doodle for a character sheet for playtesting rev 1 of the system. Nothing reall...
February 19, 2012
February 19, 2012
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